Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 23, 1990                   TAG: 9003232334
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SCHOOLS BALANCE BUDGET

In the process, they have added eight teachers' aides for the budget year starting July 1.

The $62.1 million spending plan, which the School Board is expected to approve next week, represents an increase of slightly more than 6.4 percent over the current budget.

Board Chairman Frank Thomas said it is "a very, very tight budget, a bare bones budget" except for the salary increases.

The proposed budget presented to the board last week included a $237,273 deficit.

Since then, Superintendent Bayes Wilson and his administrators added another $96,600 in costs to hire the teachers' aides.

Then they balanced the books this way:

They added $157,000 in increased revenues from the county's share of state recordation taxes.

They scaled back non-teacher pay raises from an average of 5.2 to 5 percent.

Teachers would still get average pay raises of 5.2 percent, above the state mandate of 5 percent.

They saved $10,000 by cutting a proposed summer school remedial program for the lower grades.

They cut a proposal to give teachers one paid day of personal leave. Currently teachers get five personal days at partial pay.

They lowered estimates of what the cost will be for school employees' group health plan.

Wilson said more recent information has shown that the schools likely won't have to pay out as much in health costs as earlier predicted.

Thomas said the supervisors have promised the schools 50 percent of all new revenues, even though the current school funding currently represents about 47 percent of the total county budget.